ATLANTA – The Powerball jackpot for Saturday’s drawing has jumped to over a half-billion dollars. There were no jackpot winners in Wednesday’s drawing, so Saturday’s jackpot has soared to an estimated $510 million to a single annuity winner.

The jackpot began rolling June 14 and has rolled 19 times.

Three winning tickets worth $50,000 each were sold in Georgia for Wednesday’s drawing. Two tickets were sold in Marietta, and one ticket was sold in Conyers. Additionally, over 81,000 players in Georgia won more than $419,000 in prizes Wednesday.

Powerball offers two jackpot payment options: the $510 million jackpot prize paid over 29 years in 30 graduated payments; or the cash option, which is approximately $324 million.

Powerball tickets are $2 per play.

As with all other Georgia Lottery games, proceeds from Powerball will benefit education in the state of Georgia.

Since its first year, the Georgia Lottery Corp. has returned more than $18.7 billion to the state of Georgia for education. All Georgia Lottery profits go to pay for specific educational programs, including Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship Program and Georgia’s Pre-K Program. More than 1.7 million students have received HOPE, and more than 1.4 million 4-year-olds have attended the statewide, voluntary prekindergarten program.

The cities of Jasper, Nelson and Talking Rock all have council seats, and one mayoral seat, up for election this year, with qualifying to begin on August 21, 2017.

These cities will hold a general election and one special election on November 7th to fill these seats.

In the city of Jasper councilmembers Anne Sneve and Sonny Proctor are up for re-election. Qualifying costs $35.

In Nelson, Mayor Larry Ray is up for reelection and councilmembers James Queen and Kelsey Riehl also have terms that will expire at the end of the year. The council seat for Tina Monaghan’s unexpired term is also up for grabs. Monaghan left her position as

Areas in Georgia that are doing well now are projected to keep doing well and areas that are struggling will continue to lose job opportunities and population in the next decade, according to the speaker at last week’s Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Chattahoochee Technical College.

Pickens County is better-off than the counties who are struggling but not projected to see the robust growth that will mainly remain in metro-Atlanta and the surrounding counties.

Pickens County’s Boys and Girls Club of North Georgia recently received much-needed transportation assistance when the local school system donated two decommissioned buses to the club. According to Director Michele Brackin, the buses will allow the club to bring kids from Pickens High, Jasper Elementary and Jasper Middle School. Previously, kids from the high school and Jasper Middle were not served by the club due to lack of transportation.

“Last year when we opened the club we were able to utilize MATS buses to bring children from Hill City and Jasper Elementary,” Brackin said. “The school system brought kids from Harmony Elementary because our club was within their home district and we walked kids over from Pickens County Middle School. Unfortunately, there was no service for JMS or Tate or the high school.”

The Veterans Administration recently announced it will open a clinic in Pickens County to provide medical services to veterans here and in surrounding areas. We thought it was worthwhile to take a look at the local veteran population and how it compares to other county, state, and national populations.

Using estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011-2015 American Community Survey, Lisa Schnellinger of NearMedia LLC developed interactive digital graphics about Pickens County veterans, which can be found at pickensprogressonline.com/vets. These graphics include information about the veteran population size, education, salary, unemployment, disability and period of service.

American Community Survey data is an estimate, but is the most accurate and current information available for counties with small populations. The graphics include only data that is statistically significant when considering the margin of error.